


Absent Ash

by princeanxious



Series: A Scorched Tragedy [1]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Deceit | Janus Sanders Has PTSD, Dissociation, Emotional Trauma, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Insomnia, Mental Breakdown, Night Terrors, Nightmares, POV Deceit | Janus Sanders, Starvation, Suicidal Ideation, assumed multiple character deaths, blink and you'll miss that Janus goes into shock very briefly, eventual reunited DLAMP, fantasy magic world au, lifelong disabilities gained from traumatic event, no ones actually dead, oh my god where do we even start, or very little comfort, past-DLAMP, reoccurring triggers manifesting from trauma(fire)-related event, self deprecation, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27600712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princeanxious/pseuds/princeanxious
Summary: Janus has been carrying the weight of losing his four beloved partners in battle on his shoulders for 6 long years. The road to recovery has been rough, and even now he still can’t quite forgive himself for not being able to save them from death. But he’s learning to move on with the help of a new friend, Emile.He’d been so close to finally letting it all go, you know. Which is why it only seemed to feel all the more deserved when it all went wrong.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil/Creativity | Roman/Deceit | Janus/Logic | Logan/Morality | Patton (Sanders Sides), Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Dr. Emile Picani
Series: A Scorched Tragedy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017831
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	Absent Ash

**Author's Note:**

> Here's part one of my newest fic series! This first fic is one of the most intense ones of the planned bunch, and future fics in the series will carry some level of fluff to balance out the angst, but this ones heavy for good reason. (this originated as a vent fic, just to try and get out off my bad feelings, but it seems it wasn't enough to actually sooth the soul, so more parts to this series are in the works!)

Janus had learned a lot of things in the six years following The Tragedy. He’d needed to, if he was ever going to recover. 

He learned how to stand and better use his cane to distribute his weight so that he could walk without straining his healing leg. It was more habit now than necessity, seeing as his leg joints now only bothered to give him grief when it got cold.

He learned how to function with one eye, when the other eventually gave out to the damage it’d endured. Who'd known just how much trouble came from losing one eye, and the change in his depth perception had taken months to adjust to. His hearing on that side had luckily remained intact, but Emile remained the only companion allowed to approach him on his blind side despite that. He still longed for the length of his hair to once again grow long enough to cover the burn scars that now marred his once comforting face.

He learned to write with his opposite hand, if only for something to do as he healed, as even the strongest healing salves had not been able to strengthen his hand’s damaged tendons. It was a miracle that he could still use his burned hands at all, he supposed. Damaged or not though, he knew he would not be writing any letters or drawing any pictures for anyone in the near future. 

There was no longer anyone to give them to, after all.

He learned not to dwell on the fact that Emile was now his only traveling companion, and that The Tragedy had decided even this of his fate. He supposed it was better than no companion at all, even if said supposition was often followed by a deep-seeded grief that whispered his death would still have been kinder. And _far_ more deserved.

He had learned to ignore that voice, too, if he ever wanted to believe any hope for his warring mind to heal.

He’s learned how to cope with the nightmares, the tears, the fear and guilt, when the roiling heat of a flame came too close, or when the phantom pains of burning skin threatened to deafen him with the roaring of an all consuming fire that had once already engulfed him. He’d never realized standing in the rain could sound so strikingly similar to the crackling sound of burning trees.

Emile had taught him many things, in the three years that they’d been traveling together. The very first thing he learned, though, was that Emile was as stubborn as an ox, and witty as a fox. Janus in the present would be thankful for this factor, three years down the line, but Janus from the past had hated him. What's more was that Janus simply hated _himself_.

It’s hard to feel deserving of a new companion when the last group you had died to your hands despite your powerless attempts to save them.

It took Emile nearly a year to eventually break down Janus’s bitter cemented walls. Even when being cursed at and screamed at and swatted at, even when Janus spent an entire month absolutely silent in hopes of ridding himself of his persistent companion, Emile refused to give up on the shorter mage. And his persistence was eventually rewarded.

Perhaps it was because Emile reminded Janus of two of his dearly departed loves, and he’d eventually no longer been able to bear the reminder of being the only one left of their party, alive and all alone.

He had learned from Emile that what clings to his mind is three parts survivor's guilt, traumatic loss, and PTSD. Janus had not been inclined to agree with him, but he’d long since resigned to the fact that Emile could and would spend hours debating that long standing fight if Janus voiced as such. It was often better when he didn’t, and Janus was quite tired of denying it at this point anyway.

They'd made quite a bit of progress in the past two years, actually. Janus could finally approach and stand by an open fire, though the line was drawn when it came to attempting to cook with it. Janus was slowly coming back to himself, and could go days without so much as even flinching at a memory of one of his beloveds. He could draw out his magic for small little tricks without being overtaken by the echoed memory of feeding it into an all-engulfing inferno.

He could snark and sass Emile without shutting down, he found himself able to smile at happy things without letting the guilt consume him. He could let things remind him of his loves, and could let himself believe that they’d love these things, and love him for letting himself heal through their shared memories.

When Emile had offered an idea to tackle a large step in getting closure, Janus had very nearly fallen flat on his back. Actually, there was no ‘nearly,’ he’d absolutely fallen flat to the ground from the sheer speed he’d used to whirl around and look at Emile when he spoke.

Emile wanted them to travel to Janus’s home town. Or, not quite the town he’d been born in, but the town he’d lived in all those years before The Tragedy. 

The town he’d moved into and met his first beloved, a strikingly intelligent scholar and fellow mage apprentice. The town they’d used as a meeting point, so that they could catch up between their travels, where they would both graduate into full-fledged mages and mutual partners.

The town where their duo became a trio, when they met an ever happy, bubbly paladin, and were both immediately smitten and had been ever since.

The town where they’d brought home their fourth and fifth beloveds, a snarky rogue and a whimsical bard, to heal from a particularly nasty battle. Both had taken time to warm up to their peculiar dynamic, but in the end they too had come to love them back just as fiercely.

The town where so many good memories had been born, a place of his past that he’d scarcely let himself dwell on in fear of relapsing his grief. A place he couldn’t bear to return to and dare show his battered face. To reveal to their once beloved community that Janus hadn’t been able to save his loves, and ruin what little comfort he held in the memories of the past with a timeless guilt.

Emile had suggested that exposure to the town in present time might help Janus add another card to his new deck of coping mechanisms. A reminder that the present still lives on despite what happened in the past, despite what has been lost. A reminder for _him_ to move on, as well.

It’s been six whole years since The Tragedy, and yet Janus still falters on the answer he knows he wants to give. It takes him a week to come to terms with it, that it means finally physically moving on from their deaths and continuing in their stead, to finally heal from the loss. It makes him sick, realizing that he'd held on to his grief for so long, knowing they would have been upset with him for not letting himself heal after all this time.

He decides to do it.

His heart fractures with the weight that this one decision carries.

It takes them two weeks to travel to his hometown and the entirety of said two weeks leading up to their arrival are hell on earth for Janus. Between the nightmares and insomnia, the panic attacks and dissociation, Emile has to work overtime just to make sure Janus doesn’t physically collapse.

Emile offers to call the quest off multiple times, but Janus has learned many things from Emile in their time together. He has learned to be stubborn when it counts, and _now_ more than ever does it _count_.

He refuses to take the offer to give up, every single time.

He’s grateful when they finally reach the town’s edge, as the sight unravels a portion of the tension Janus had been clinging to. The town was still standing, and in fact had grown a good bit in Janus’s six year absence. So many things look different on the surface, yet he can see that so much is still the same.

He spends an hour staring at the town from their distance, letting his brain replay what it wants of his memories. The good, the bad, the ugly. When he laughed, when he cried, when he fought, when they died. Better to get it out of his system now than dissociate in the middle of town square. (Even if that was likely going to happen anyway.) 

Emile waits for him all the same, a strong grounding presence at his side while he works through his inner turmoil.

When he finally feels ready to face the music, they pack up what little they’d pulled out, and make their way into town. For the most part, Janus manages just fine. He handles their horses as Emile briefly goes inside to check them in at the achingly familiar Sanders Inn. 

Some passing faces are somewhat familiar, plenty more are not. Janus is not the undamaged young man he once was, and he knows full well he is quite the sight to see. The Tragedy had permanently changed him, no matter how light his scars got. Six years has given him time to accept that, and adjust to the frequent glances and subtle stares from those who think he can't see them.

Here, in a place he once called home six years ago, he stands now as a complete stranger.

_‘Perhaps it is for the better that I am unrecognizable,’_ He ponders to himself.

He hopes that Emile won't be much longer, and allows his gaze to wander from building to building, reverting to his usual hobby of people watching to pass the time.

Then, an unmistakable voice calls out to him, loud and brash and the sound of _home_.

“Hey stranger, penny for the story of your wicked scars?”

Janus’s traitorous mouth twitches into a brief smile on instinct from the voice alone, all the while his fragile heart shatters as he registers the voice from memory.

Perhaps it’s because he believed he’d lost Remus to The Tragedy even had never really been sure, but to hear that voice awakens an indescribable feeling deep within his mind. In the week he’d spent searching for them before his collapse, there had been as much evidence of Remus surviving as there was for his brother in the soot and ash: None.

In Janus’s grief and the months he’d spent searching for them after he’d healed enough to walk again, he’d found nothing, no leads, no rumors, not a hide nor hair of the usually trackable warlock amongst the ash. He’d assumed his best friend had perished alongside his loves then, too.

Apparently, a little feeble voice of hope in his mind whispers, he’d assumed wrong.

“Hellooo? Earth to the mysterious but attractive traveler??” The voice calls again.

Janus relented, finally meeting eyes with the achingly familiar man calling out to him.

For a brief, disorienting moment, he’d almost wished he’d been right.

Did Remus _know?_ He’d obviously survived The Tragedy, more than survived if the obvious lack of burn scarring spoke any truth. (Though it wasn’t exactly like Janus had attempted to heal his wounds properly, he’d paid them no mind outside of avoiding infection. The scars just served as a reminder that he’d survived, and _they_ hadn’t.)

His mind whirled with a dizzying hope, splintering the edges of his already fractured heart. He’d mourned them all for six long years, and suddenly Remus was standing there right across the way, smoking something abnormally colorful from his favorite enchanted pipe, harassing strangers with his lack of social boundaries and gleefully enjoying every second of it. Standing there as if The Tragedy had never happened, looking as far from a charred corpse as Remus himself could really be.

Standing there as if he hadn’t lost his twin brother to an all consuming barrage of fireball attacks from a since-defeated invading army. Hell, Remus hardly looked bothered enough by Janus’s lack of response to pout, though that was pretty distinctly what the warlock was doing right now.

It wasn’t exactly impossible for Remus to be alive, as he’d been stationed in a different part of the forest for the ambush, but..

There’d been too many fireballs, he remembers being resigned to counting them one by one in horror as he failed time and again to struggle out of the enemies’ grip. He’d been posing as a spy, a scout, a messenger. He’d been vital to make the ambush work.

He’d been captured in the same moment they’d figured out about the ambush.

He’d been forced to watch it go up in flames.

He’d failed to save them.

So why- No, _how_ was Remus still _alive?_

The warlock’s name spills out of his mouth before his disaster of a frenzied brain can realize that Remus might not be too happy to find he’s face to face with the one held responsible for his brother’s death. To find the last standing member of their polyamorous quintet, burned and broken, yet unjustly still breathing. But Janus’s mind still can’t quite compute the fact that Remus is alive and well, not 10 feet away, to stop himself.

“R..Remus..?”

As the words leave his mouth, Emile steps into his vision, startling him a bit more solidly back into the present. He’d caught the tail end of Emile confirming that their rooms had been successfully acquired, before trailing off in concern at Janus’s obvious distress. It does not occur to Janus that Emile is not aware of the exact reason for Janus’s distress until Emile speaks again.

“ _Hey hey hey_ , Janus, _breathe_. I know it’s a lot to take in but you’ve gotta breath with me, Jan-jan.”

Janus doesn’t really hear Emile after that. His mind is far too hyper focused on the way Remus’s eyes, which had blinked in slight confusion when Janus had uttered his name, then widened in realization. He watches as Remus drops his jaw, and pipe, in shock.

The next few seconds are a blur, and suddenly Janus finds Remus right up in his personal space in the blink of an eye. He can hear Emile’s confused inquiry but neither mage or warlock hear him through their mutual shock.

Remus’s eyes are wide in absolute disbelief, and they shed tears freely as his calloused hands just barely hover on either side of Janus’s head. Crazed dark brown eyes flick too and fro, cataloging the changes and the similarities of the mage’s face with mounting anguish, the earlier morbid curiosity morphing into something akin to horror.

“J-Janus..? Scales? I-is that you?” Remus’s voice is already choked, and breaking up with emotion. Janus swallows against his mounting panic attack as tears threaten to spill from his own eyes, suddenly desperate to respond in kind with a matching familiarity. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed his best friend until the other was trying to confirm it was truly him.

“Hey R-re. Long time nh-no see, Dukie” Jan’s shaking voice greets, a weak smile gracing his lips.

With a broken sob, Remus’s arms curled tight around his middle, swiftly pulling Janus up off the ground into a trembling tumultuous hug. Despite Emile’s gentle sound of concern, he needed not to worry, as Remus’s arms were trembling with the effort to hold Janus gently. It was so obvious Remus wanted to give him one of his trademark death hugs, but couldn’t dare do so just in case he accidentally hurt Janus further.

Janus’s arms wrapped tight around Remus’s neck in return, burying his face in the other’s stained cloaked shoulder. Remus’s hold feels like home in a way that nothing else has ever quite felt in the past six years, and Janus can’t help the shuttering sob that escapes him as he’s overwhelmed with grief and relief. 

“I-I thought you-you had.. had died, _t-too_. Oh my god, you odorous bastard, _y-you’re alive!”_ He finds himself saying, because what else is he supposed to say to someone he’d spent 6 years believing was dead?

Janus doesn’t think much of his words, not with the overwhelming feelings of finding his best friend alive clouding his mind, it's nearly too much to process on its own.

But when Remus pulls away, the confused look returning full force as Janus tries in vain to wipe away the still flowing tears from his own scarred face. He sees Remus mouth a word, repeating Janus’s _'too?'_ further fueling his confusion, before a horrific realization dawns on his scruffy face.

Before Janus can speak or even turn to Emile for assurance, Janus is returned to standing on the floor, Remus taking his free hand and immediately leading him forward into the Sanders Inn.

Remus looks frantic, but says nothing as he leads an ever more confused Janus and Emile further into a much too familiar interior, Emile silently putting his hand on one of Janus’s arms to keep him grounded. Janus is at least coherent enough to recognize Remus slowing his pace considerably to accommodate for Janus's limp, but his thoughts are spinning with too many memories and nostalgia that he’s really not prepared to face while this overstimulated to be thankful. Slowed but still determined, Remus continues on, strangely silent.

He doesn’t stop as they walk down the all too familiar well-decorated hall that echoes with Remus’s familiar thundering steps, moving them towards a familiar alcove filled with even more violently familiar chattering voices.

Janus’s brain pieces together what Remus is showing him and what's going on two seconds too late, and by then the trio had stopped at the single table inside the alcove.

Four impossible faces stare back at him, mirroring his own expression of shock.

His breath stutters so hard he thinks his heart skips a beat. 

All at once it feels like he's been wrenched back in time, six years ago, the day before they’d all split to aid in the ambush. The last time they’d all been together, eaten a meal together, laughed together, the last time he'd been able to tell them ‘I love you.”

His ears are nearly ringing as the remaining conversations within the inn finally fall to a complete silence. It feels like he’s being suffocated with smoke as he screams for them and sifts through the soot and flame. His magic searching and searching but never finding anything more than ash. His tears evaporating from the heat as his shouts are drowned out by the deafening roar of cackling flames.

Driven by fear, dread, devastation, fueled by desperation to find them, to save them, to see them again. Days spent in the still-burning forest, running on magic and sorrow and grief alone. Months collapsed and dying and wishing himself dead just to be with them again, resenting his cowardice to finally just put an end to his miserable life. Years spent believing that he should have rightfully died in that fire instead of them, and resenting the fact that he'd lived, and taking it as punishment for not being enough to save them.

And yet, here in their quaint little hometown, here in their favorite Inn, sat here at their favorite table?

Logan, Patton, Virgil, Roman, his once thought to be deceased loves standing in good health with not an injury to be seen?

_Alive?_

There's a brief few seconds where he meets each of their eyes, finding something different in each expression. He's not sure what breaks him more, the absolute disbelief and surprise in Patton and Logan's shining eyes, or the glares of distrust and betrayal in Virgil and Roman’s. 

Those few seconds of reflection are enough to break what's left of the reality that he had been holding onto.

He doesn’t hear it when he drops his staff, doesn’t feel it when his knees hit the wood sharply. He can’t tell if his eyes are open or if they shut, but his lungs won't listen to him and suddenly everything is too much. His rapid heartbeat is thundering in his head as he finds his hands yanking at his pitifully short hair. A strangled noise of anguish escapes him as he fights not to drown in his mind. He loses.

_‘Perhaps death would have been more merciful than this.’_

They’d been alive and well, they’d _escaped_ The Tragedy, and so The Tragedy hadn’t actually _happened_. _They hadn't died_ , Janus _hadn't_ lost them.

So, _why?_

_Why_ hadn’t they come for him? Hadn't they tried to find him? He’d spent months bound to a bed to heal and they could have come to him, could have found him if they'd been as persistent as he, right? He’d spent days in that fire, burning himself alive, dying trying to find them, desperate to save his loved ones.

And they’d left him for dead. They hadn’t even tried.

_Had they?_

The world snaps back to focus some time later as Janus finds himself flat on his back, his arms out straight and held similarly flat against the floor. His legs are carefully elevated and pinned in Emile’s lap.

_‘They abandoned you,’_ The grief in his heart whispers.

Janus’s arms jerk with the violent art to scratch, pull, _hurt_ himself in a way he hasn’t felt in over a year. It makes him realize Emile’s attached the enchanted cuffs to his wrists, a creation Emile had specially invented for self-destructive melt downs like the one he was probably having right now.

They were made to keep his hands away from himself and others, disallowing any movements to make contact with the intent of harm. Right now they were keeping his wrists pinned outwards, helping keep him flat on his back.

It doesn't stop some broken part of him from desperately wanting to use the pain to ground himself, to use physical wounds to ignore the mental ones. Some grieving part inside of him just wants to _hurt_ , to feel something familiar and use it to shut out the new, painful intrusive thoughts. He knows he's relapsing, he desperately wants to stop, but he can't think, too overwhelmed with panic and grief to cope.

It takes Janus a few minutes longer to realize he's crying as well, so hard that his chest is heaving with it, and yet so shallowly that he’s near silent. The trade off between heaving sobs and stifled breaths is disorienting. And his stomach threatens to lurch with each sob but there's nothing inside to heave.

_‘You’re useless. Are you really that surprised that they left you?’_ The grief calls again, this time sounding mixed with bitter resentment.

He jerks again, his head throbbing from slamming down on the floor this time, trying desperately to get his stupid thoughts to stop screaming at him. 

“I’m _sorry_ , _I tried,_ I’m _sorry_ ” The words spill from his lips, burning like cinders on his tongue as he desperately tries to prove himself.

Despite everything, he still desperately wants to love them. Still desperately wants to prove to _them_ that he loves them.

“I tried, _I’m sorry_ , searched for _so long_ , the fire, couldn’t stop it”

He doesn’t process Emile’s gentle shushing as he can’t help but whimper the confessions. He doesn't feel Remus’s hands cradling his shaking head, or feel when Logan lays his weighed coat over Janus’s trembling chest.

“ _Couldn’t find you_ , so much _fire_ , couldn’t _breath_ , _couldn’t save you”_ Janus cries.

He can’t bare to see see their faces, too far gone to the hysteria of this attack to remember they're even there.

“You _died_ , _my fault,_ couldn’t _save_ you, so much _ash_ , couldn’t _find_ you, where’d you _go?’_ Janus sobs.

Virgil and Roman share similar expressions of mounting horror, Logan and Patton looking positively ashen. Remus's is one of pure sorrow, and Emile's expression is set to a carefully neutral frown.

“Y-you went into the forest while it was still on fire?” Comes Remus’s shaking voice, but Janus can’t hear him over the roaring pulse in his ears. 

Janus’s body was finally running out of energy and adrenaline, and the group watches as Janus slowly but surely slumps into a relaxed state, unconscious.

For a few long moments, everyone stood still, shocked to silence.

Then Emile finally spoke up, his voice edging on peeved exhaustion as he carefully moved to cradle Janus’s head and shoulders in his lap.

“You all have some _serious_ explaining to do.”


End file.
